confound used in Moby Dick

in various senses, including:confuse or surprise — sometimes specifically to confuse one thing with another

"confounded by the puzzle" — confused or perplexed

"Test results confounded the experts." — surprised and confused

"Do not confound confidence with correctness." — mistake one thing for another

prove wrong, defeat, or frustrate

"The test results confounded my theory." — proved wrong

"Their defense confounded our offense." — defeated or frustrated

make worse

"She confounded the problem by painting without sanding." — made worse

"The task is complicated by other confounding factors." — making worse

an exclamation expressing anger or frustration

"Confound it! Will I ever get this thing to work?"

"I don't understand the confounded directions!"

Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds.

Chapters 37-39 -- Sunset; Dusk; First Night-Watch (10% in)

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast.

Chapters 1-3 -- Loomings; The Carpet-Bag; The Spouter-Inn (41% in)

Ignorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and confounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of him as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at the dead of night.

Chapters 1-3 -- Loomings; The Carpet-Bag; The Spouter-Inn (87% in)

I knew not how this consciousness at last glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery.

Chapters 4-6 -- The Counter-Pane; Breakfast; The Street (20% in)

Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down to the human magnitude) among a plate of men's skulls, and you would involuntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions on one part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say—This man had no self-esteem, and no veneration.